Realm Reborn = downgrade?

[Velhart]

Okay, it seems some people simply do not understand why this choice was made. I understand why there is so much defence for keeping the current animations but what people need to realise is that the current animations do not work in a proper MMO. Before you go crazy on me, you need to understand that even though this is Final Fantasy, it's an MMO first. In an MMO the franchise itself means NOTHING if the gameplay is shabby and poorly developed, hence 1.0 and its failure (also notice SWTOR).

For example, take the classic 'move out of the fire' scenario. You're a caster. A fire appears underneath you. You need to quickly move out of the fire and then continue damaging the enemy. As it stands, to be able to quickly run out of the fire and properly reposition yourself, you need to switch off the targeting, press the movement keys, let go of the movement key and then wait until the character reaches a complete halt before you start casting again. You simply can't allow these kinds of aesthetics to affect combat and gameplay in such an inferior way compared to what's known as 'the standard', or it won't be in any form a success. It's this situation where the animations are affecting core gameplay and shouldn't exist.

As much as people hate others bringing up WoW, there is a BIG reason as to why it's such a success. And no, it's not because it's Warcraft, out of the hundreds of people I've played with not one of them cared about lore (even though I know there are lore-lovers out there), it's because it's the ONLY MMO since its release to be strict to a cast time and not care about animations. You press a movement key and you run, you let go you stop. Everything is instant, and it's fluid and smooth. Is it realistic? Not really. Is it aesthetically pleasing? Not really. The point is, when you're playing an MMORPG, the combat, movement and gameplay have to be fluid, smooth and have the player fully in control of what the character is doing.

As long as these types of animations have NOTHING to do with combat or gameplay, it's okay for it to be implemented. But seeing as there's no animation lock for 2.0, having the movement animations of 1.0 WOULD affect gameplay. I'm trusting the devs on this one because they honestly seem like they know what they're doing and they're being vastly underappreciated for the amount of dedicated work they have put into this game. It's like you guys are wanting another 1.0 failure. You can throw as many realism arguments around as you like, but you need to realise the people who would rather settle on 'realistic' movements and aesthetics over core gameplay are in the minority and are being ignorant at the fact this is not how MMO's work. The rest of us actually want fluid movements and combat, because that's the main importance in an MMO over graphics and animations. I don't mean to sound disrespectful because I can see why people would want the animations back, but they just don't fly well in an MMORPG.

Beautifully written. The most important thing in "any" game honestly is the game play itself. Miyamoto from Nintendo has said several times that how they make games is that they build the core game play and make sure it is solid, then they will make a story around that game play. This is the same thing with MMO's, and even Blizzard did this. They made sure the game play was solid before adding the world, lore, and neat animations in later.

The new development team for FFXIV is going by these ideals, they want to make sure that the game play is as solid and fluid as possible, and one of the things to do was cut down on the animation. You can be disappointed all you like, but on a technical scale, you should understand the situation.